| |||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||
Opponents protest signing of ACTA without adequate debate (ars technica)Opponents protest signing of ACTA without adequate debate (ars technica)Posted Jan 28, 2012 10:23 UTC (Sat) by coriordan (guest, #7544)In reply to: Opponents protest signing of ACTA without adequate debate (ars technica) by Wol Parent article: Opponents protest signing of ACTA without adequate debate (ars technica)
That's a great way to put it! Translate their losses to a per-person or per-household amount that they expect will be paid if the situation is "fixed".
Where have "losses" numbers been published?
I've found global figures, and figures about how much a country is losing - but that would include exports. All a bit slippery. Are their any numbers for how much a company is losing, for example "from the British public"?
(Log in to post comments)
Opponents protest signing of ACTA without adequate debate (ars technica) Posted Jan 28, 2012 12:11 UTC (Sat) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
Unfortunately, a lot of these figures are tricky to come by. I can't remember where I came across the UK figures. I do remember coming across, somewhere, that they expect the average person to *buy* about *twenty* DVDs a week! At £20 per DVD (yes I know that's list, not actual retail), that's the average household income blown!
And when is someone going to find time to watch those DVDs?! If they're working they have no time, if they're not working they have no money.
And even if you can't tie down the figures and can't do a bullet-proof job of it, you can use the figures the industry provides, "guess" the details you don't know, and make sure your congress-critter/MP/MEP/whatever *knows* where you've made assumptions. Blow it up in your favour - "see, they haven't give me enough detail to do a decent calculation. They're hiding it because they don't want somebody to investigate the figures, can you investigate for me?" :-)
Cheers,
Opponents protest signing of ACTA without adequate debate (ars technica) Posted Jan 30, 2012 14:19 UTC (Mon) by gowen (guest, #23914) [Link]
So, your entire argument is based on some half-remembered "facts" that you can't support with any actual evidence, and can't be bothered to do any research for. Have you considered working for the MPAA?
Opponents protest signing of ACTA without adequate debate (ars technica) Posted Jan 30, 2012 20:32 UTC (Mon) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
Well, if you want to write to your critter, you need to do the research!
And as for "half-remembered", yes I can't remember the figures I started with. But I *DO* remember doing those calculations, and I *DO* remember coming up with the "> 100% of income" result.
And the "20 DVDs a week" figure is also a firm memory.
My entire argument is based on "if you get hold of any figures, break it down and compare it to reality".
Cheers,
Opponents protest signing of ACTA without adequate debate (ars technica) Posted Jan 28, 2012 22:03 UTC (Sat) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] Where have "losses" numbers been published?I suppose that's another great move by those behind ACTA: Since it's been negotiated in secret and approved without much publicly available debate (let alone public debate) we have no idea what the lobbyists have been whispering in the ears of the politicians. At least with normal legislation the government, commissioner or parlamentarian driving some legislation has to put forwards arguments (such as financial ones) about why the legislation is needed. This text usually incorporates whatever nonsense lobbyists have been provided after which it is relatively easy to point out errors. (Whether that then has any effect is of course another question.)
Opponents protest signing of ACTA without adequate debate (ars technica) Posted Jan 29, 2012 22:31 UTC (Sun) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]
Of course, the significant point is that the entertainment industry *is* losing a lot of money due to piracy of their copyrighted works. If they are inflating the numbers... well... that's not the core of the issue, is it.
We get just as upset when *our* copyright user licenses are violated. There *is* an injustice here which needs to be corrected.
The fact is that people *like* being able to pirate works of entertainment.
We should be just as outraged at the flagrant copyright violations being perpetrated against "them" as we would be about those perpetrated against our own copylefted works.
But instead, we do what we can to rally the pirating public against these efforts (misguided as they may be) to stop piracy.
If this were truly a matter of championing that which is right, and did not involve a threat to people's "right" to violate copyright when it suits them, we wouldn't be able to rally a fraction of what we have to the cause.
Hypocrisy abounds. All around. And on all sides.
-Steve
Opponents protest signing of ACTA without adequate debate (ars technica) Posted Jan 30, 2012 3:01 UTC (Mon) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
Sure there is some loss and piracy is probably wrong, its one big reason I got started with Linux, so that I could use Free software without guilt bu the proportions matter. To just say that both sides are hypocritical and leave it at that is to promote a false equivalency. The fact that situations are often not equivalent seems to offend the natural sense of balance in many people. The industry is using their fabricated numbers to justify spending a proportional amount of public money, my money, to enforce rules and prosecute court cases. I have an interest in us not spending more on fraud prevention than what it's worth, and its probably not worth that much.
Opponents protest signing of ACTA without adequate debate (ars technica) Posted Jan 30, 2012 7:34 UTC (Mon) by tnoo (subscriber, #20427) [Link]
Obviously people *do* copy work with copyrights. Part of the rationale behind copying is how the contet industry treats their *customers*: Why should I not be able to watch a DVD which I bought legally in the US on my DVD-Player bought in Europe (DVD country-code madness)? Or more explicitly: Why should I bother buying content if there is no warranty that I can acually use it on my playback equipment?
Calling any of these actions "piracy" is outrageous. Pirates take over other people's ships and either rob them, or hold them hostage. How is transferring some bytes between storage devices only marginally similar to those crimes?
We care about free software licences, not copyright Posted Jan 30, 2012 7:55 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
Not at all.
We care about passing freedoms on to computer users. We invoke whatever law happens to be required.
There's no generalised support for copyright law there.
Opponents protest signing of ACTA without adequate debate (ars technica) Posted Jan 30, 2012 9:41 UTC (Mon) by AndreE (subscriber, #60148) [Link]
There is nothing hypocritical about believing that the real economic impact of piracy does not warrant the sort of far-reaching, ill-considered, unethical, and potentially disastrous legislation and agreements being proposed to combat it.
Quite simply, one can be against some behaviour, but also be against a specific method of combating such a behaviour. That should surely be quite obvious.
Opponents protest signing of ACTA without adequate debate (ars technica) Posted Jan 30, 2012 10:54 UTC (Mon) by Seegras (subscriber, #20463) [Link]
<i>Of course, the significant point is that the entertainment industry *is* losing a lot of money due to piracy of their copyrighted works. If they are inflating the numbers... well... that's not the core of the issue, is it.
We get just as upset when *our* copyright user licenses are violated. There *is* an injustice here which needs to be corrected.</i>
Actually, yes, they're loosing *some* money; but no fucking loss of money is EVER going to justify a restriction of civil liberties. We may be infuriated if somebody illegally copies our works, BUT we're not going to push a draconian big-brother state because of that.
There's a difference of "being mad at someone as civilian person" and "changing the laws to punish someone" (and besides, it's not even "to punish someone for a perceived injustice", it's "to grant me a rent").
And furthermore, a lot less of "copyright infringement" would take place if the copyright was put back to where it was in the early 19th century. Read this http://homepages.law.asu.edu/~dkarjala/opposingcopyrighte... to see what happened (and what he predicted in 1842!)
Opponents protest signing of ACTA without adequate debate (ars technica) Posted Jan 31, 2012 9:40 UTC (Tue) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]
> And furthermore, a lot less of "copyright infringement" would take place if the copyright was put back to where it was in the early 19th century. Read this http://homepages.law.asu.edu/~dkarjala/opposingcopyrighte... to see what happened (and what he predicted in 1842!)
This is an amazing read, thank you for the link :)
Opponents protest signing of ACTA without adequate debate (ars technica) Posted Jan 30, 2012 20:41 UTC (Mon) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
What you're missing is that all the studies show that "piracy" is, in practice, free advertising! And successful advertising, at that!
All the real studies show that heavy downloaders are heavy buyers. People who don't download, don't buy. That's certainly true of me.
There is massive hypocrisy - not least in that the labels (who *accuse* the public of pirating their works) are pretty blatant pirates themselves...
Cheers.
ACTA backfires Posted Jan 31, 2012 11:12 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Exactly. I hope that once ACTA is in place, the copyright police have started raiding houses and shutting down websites, that the public will lose interest in unlicensed ("pirated") and licensed music from the industry cartel, at the same time.I don't know what would come next, and perhaps (probably) this is just wishful thinking on my side. To be honest, I don't find contemporary music too compelling. The only pity is the huge catalog from the last century which is not available anywhere else and which will not enter the public domain in this century either (if ever).
|
|
||||||||||||